Volunteers sweep Dauphin Island beaches in preparation for oil spill

View full size(Press-Register/John David Mercer)Beach grasses along the beaches of the Audubon Bird Sanctuary Monday May 3, 2010 on Dauphin Island, Ala. as oil leaking from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead continues to spread in the Gulf of Mexico. Some of the 10,000 oil spill volunteers were out along the beach Wednesday morning, cleaning the beach in case the oil spill comes ashore.DAUPHIN ISLAND, Ala. -- Patricia Pitt's 8-year-old grandson was reluctant to leave his grandparents' Dauphin Island home this weekend, she said.

"He worried that he won't be able to swim in our canal because of the oil," Pitt said.

Pitt and her husband, Chuck, spent three hours on Monday cleaning the beaches of Dauphin Island, picking up "paper, bottles, cans, anything that wasn't normal to the beach, like cigarette butts. There were just millions of them," Pitt said.

According to the Mobile Bay National Estuary Program, about 10,000 people like Pitt have registered to help with cleanup efforts.

"There is just so much down there that you don't find at the beach anywhere else," Pitt said. "We love it and want to do anything we can to maintain it and to keep it pristine. We want it to be a good place for our grandchildren to enjoy, as we've always done."